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Republicans are finally on the verge of enacting a signature legislative achievement.

It's something that seemed up in the air less than 24 hours before the vote, unlikely just a few months ago and completely unfathomable despite bold claims to the contrary midway through President Donald Trump's first year in office.

Yet the Republican-controlled US Senate, by a vote of 51-49, early Saturday morning passed a historic overhaul of the US tax code, clearing what has long been considered the largest and most byzantine hurdle in an effort that hasn't been completed in more than 31 years.

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Opponents say that it will diretly hurt the middle to lower class americans, while only benefiting those who are already rich.

Supporters say businesses reaping the benefits will invest those profits back into business thus indirectly helping all Americans.

History tends to show the former is more likely, and that the latter is an unrealistic platitude which doesn't actually work as advertised. I have a hard time believing something so rushed and unvetted will actually help anyone other than the ones doing the rushing... but I guess all we can do now is wait and see if the promised benefits actually come to pass.

The middle class does not get a permanent tax break. In the end of it all, their taxes go up slightly, and there's a big decrease for the rich due to the sheer amount of money they have. The true problem for the middle class is the loss of important deductions.

Amazon pays less than 1% of global revenue to taxes, so we're not that worried about the corporate tax rate by comparison. The average corp pays something like 13%.

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History tends to show the former is more likely, and that the latter is an unrealistic platitude which doesn't actually work as advertised. I have a hard time believing something so rushed and unvetted will actually help anyone other than the ones doing the rushing... but I guess all we can do now is wait and see if the promised benefits actually come to pass.

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Holy crap though, the more I read about this topic, the more I realize how badly we are going to get decimated (us non-1%ers). With this bill, they reached out in so many different ways to fuck us over. Some of them I didn't even foresee, like how graduate students would have to pay taxes if they wanted to do TA work. It's just one of those interesting ways this tax bill takes a giant shit on social mobility.

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First victory for Trump, first huge defeat for the middle class. Funny how that piece of shit pretended to fight the establishment and he's the epitome of neoliberalism. The only reason the establishment doesn't like him is because they have realized that the DNC's neoliberalism is smarter, it's better to slowly destroy the middle class like Obama has been doing for 8 years than swiftly attack them on all fronts like the Republicans are doing. That way they risk dangerous backlash.

Fuck both parties but fuck Republicans even more, these psychopaths are out of their minds.

avec_pénis

First victory for Trump, first huge defeat for the middle class. Funny how that piece of shit pretended to fight the establishment and he's the epitome of neoliberalism. The only reason the establishment doesn't like him is because they have realized that the DNC's neoliberalism is smarter, it's better to slowly destroy the middle class like Obama has been doing for 8 years than swiftly attack them on all fronts like the Republicans are doing. That way they risk dangerous backlash.

Fuck both parties but fuck Republicans even more, these psychopaths are out of their minds.

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Privatizing education, passing a Heritage Foundation plan as his solution for health care, protecting criminal bankers ANY means necessary, trying to pass TPP and TTIP (even fucking Trump was on the left of that issue for completely different reasons though), continuation of wars and destabilization of the Middle East that finally birthed ISIS after he armed and funded civil wars that destroyed Libya and Syria, continued feeding the military industrial complex, continued feeding the prison complex until the elections when he and Democrats always start pandering to progressives and so on.

Obama was always a charismatic snake that appealed to rightwing liberals that pretend to be left, whatever the fuck "left" means in the US anymore. I have to admit I fell for his bullshit in 2008 but it quickly became apparent what he is when his DOJ repeatedly protected bankers. Behind that front of decency there's a 90's neoliberal republican.

The fact that anyone trusts the Republicans or Democrats will always blow my mind. Both parties have demonstrated time and time again that they don't deserve it. Unless significant changes are made to the way elected officials operate and to campaign financing you're going to have a really hard time electing anyone that truly cares about the plights of the common US citizen. There's a point to be made about the voters being responsible for who they put in office, but good luck getting the overwhelming majority to adequately inform themselves and then getting those elected officials to stay grounded enough to do what the people demand when they're on term 10+ because at that point they believe they can get away with murder.

I guess when you cut tax for the rich and the corporations, the deficits need to be taken care of somehow:

The Republican tax bill assumes that drilling in ANWR will generate $1 billion in federal revenue over the next 10 years. During its last survey of the region, the U.S. Geological Survey said that 12 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil may lie beneath the reserve.

Caribou aren't the only animals that live in the ANWR. Polar bears, brown bears, and black bears all trundle through its streams and meadows. Lynx, moose, Arctic fox, walrus, and ringed seal lounge on the Arctic coast. And migratory birds&#8212;including merlins, sandpipers, and peregrine falcons&#8212;summer in the reserve before returning to the continental United States for the winter.

Now what's the next step in your master plan?

The fact that anyone trusts the Republicans or Democrats will always blow my mind. Both parties have demonstrated time and time again that they don't deserve it. Unless significant changes are made to the way elected officials operate and to campaign financing you're going to have a really hard time electing anyone that truly cares about the plights of the common US citizen. There's a point to be made about the voters being responsible for who they put in office, but good luck getting the overwhelming majority to adequately inform themselves and then getting those elected officials to stay grounded enough to do what the people demand when they're on term 10+ because at that point they believe they can get away with murder.

I have my issues with the democrats, some serious ones but the GOP are at this point trying to be as villainous as possible with what they're doing and they're not even trying to hide it. They're spitting in the face of the middle and lower class and calling it a win for them. Say what you will about the Democrats but the GOP are going to do far more damage to this country and its population than ISIS could ever hope to.

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I have my issues with the democrats, some serious ones but the GOP are at this point trying to be as villainous as possible with what they're doing and they're not even trying to hide it. They're spitting in the face of the middle and lower class and calling it a win for them. Say what you will about the Democrats but the GOP are going to do far more damage to this country and its population than ISIS could ever hope to.

You don't have to compare them. If one is bad, and the other is way, way worse that just means you have no good choices.
There are no redeeming qualities to a two party system. One of the many bad qualities is that it gives politicians way too much power over the electorate, because if not them, there's only those other guys you really would not want to vote for anyway. And here it shows specifically how the interests of donors are much more important to the politicians than the interests of the electorate.

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come on,... I think there's more than enough to criticize on both the bill and the way it passed, but with that statement there's nothing wrong and that sentence is totally out of context.

She's not claiming that 'bills in general need to be passed before the public can learn about it', she is claiming that the bits she's happy about will not get any spotlight so long as people are highlighting all the 'controversial bits', which they will do as long as they can fight it.

You don't have to compare them. If one is bad, and the other is way, way worse that just means you have no good choices.
There are no redeeming qualities to a two party system. One of the many bad qualities is that it gives politicians way too much power over the electorate, because if not them, there's only those other guys you really would not want to vote for anyway. And here it shows specifically how the interests of donors are much more important to the politicians than the interests of the electorate.

This is the thing. I have my issues with the Democrats but they're ones that can be worked on and the Democrats don't seem so far up their asses they're going to start palling around with White Nationalists. The Democrats fucking up is can cause problems but the GOP seem hell bent on fucking up on purpose and when they do so, they're gonna kill a lot of people.

Imagine how much different the online world would be today if everyone took the time to read several paragraphs for context rather than simply reacting to headlines, sound bytes, tweets or quotes taken completely out of context.

Regardless of context (not that it helps her much in this particular case - she went on to correct the record with WaPo over a year later, saying she meant the bill would need to pass in order for the public to see its benefits, not its contents), she's 77, been in office 30 years, and is sitting on as much as $200M together with her husband. You would need to be delusional to believe she understands the issues affecting lower and middle class Americans, those in rural and urban areas alike. She is a prime example of what's wrong with government.